Revamping Malaysia`s education system: Should our schools be

Revamping Malaysia’s education
system: Should our schools be
boring?
Let’s begin by stating the obvious: schools must be fun, and schools must be lively
and dynamic. Heaven forbid that schools should become boring. This is because
we believe boring schools means inefficient use of school time and resources and
that learning has failed. We believe boredom is bad because it brings mental
stagnation, and it makes our children hate school.
Research have shown we have
misjudged boredom and that
boredom is actually a necessary
experience in learning (photo from
www.gazamin.com/blog).
However, research are increasingly showing that we have misjudged boredom
and that schools ought to be, well, boring. That schools should be boring appear
counter-intuitive. How can this be? The Malaysian government has recently
unveiled (yet another) Education Blueprint 2013-25 to bring the country’s
education system out of its current quagmire, and it seems counter-productive
and even scandalous to suggest our nation’s schools should be boring.
Like most people, I believe schools should of course be less boring. Schools
should also deemphasize rote learning because rote learning, in my opinion, is
like us trying to compete with computers. We will lose all the time because
computers can remember much more, and they can remember faster and more
effectively than we can. And computers don’t get tired or error-prone, unlike us.
However, I now have my doubts. Perhaps I have been too extreme in my stance.
Yes, schools should be fun and exciting, and yes, rote learning is not learning per
se, but schools do need some elements of boredom in them, and schools do need
to place some importance on rote learning.
The article “The unbearable lightness of boredom” by Jeremy Mercer in The
Intelligent Optimist (Issue 4, Vol. 11, Jul./Aug. 2013) is profound. Mercer argues
that boredom has a bad reputation because boredom is associated with weakness
or intellectual shortcoming. But boredom can instead unleash creativity and prosocial works and deliver positive outcomes.
“The unbearable lightness of
boredom” by Jeremy Mercer in The
Intelligent Optimist (Issue 4, Vol. 11,
Jul./Aug. 2013).
Boredom is a simmering stage where the brains develops ways to keep itself
engage and could spur creativity – such as when bored children develop
storytelling skills and imaginative or make-belief plays. Playing tag, sword
fighting, robot battles, castles and forts, fairies, and car and speedboat racings
can often materialize out of bored children’s minds.
Children often use their imagination
for creative play such as
swordfighting when they feel bored
(photo
from
laundryamah.wordpress.com).
So important is boredom in triggering creativity and enhancing learning that
Teresa Belton and Esther Priyadharshini, two early childhood experts, went as far
to rally that boredom is a legitimate and necessary experience is school curricula.
Astonishing. Boredom, they say, is a critical reflective potential. A child who
cannot deal with boredom, they say, becomes flustered with higher education.
Could it be that boredom teaches our children mental endurance, focus, and
strength?
Left alone and feeling
bored, children will soon
find something to do (photo
from
www.creativityinstitute.com
).
Boredom is a necessary stage a person needs to go through to gain expertise in a
particular field. Just as an athlete goes through the tedium and repetitive training
in a gym or a piano player banging away the same musical notes repeatedly, a
student requires the tedium and repetitive mental exercise of concentrating,
memorizing, analyzing and interpreting facts, and accumulating knowledge.
Daniel Willingham, a cognitive psychologist, has written about how the mind
works in his book “Why don’t students like school: a cognitive scientist answers
questions about how the mind works and what it means for the classroom”.
“Why don’t students like
school?” by Daniel T.
Willingham.
Daniel Willingham, author of “Why
don’t students like school?” (photo
from aands.virginia.edu).
Critical thinking such as reasoning and problem solving are essential skills that
we wish to impart on our children. But Willingham argues that children cannot
have these skills without first having a sufficient grasp of basic facts of a subject.
This basic knowledge needs to be stored in the long-term memory and storing
such information would require extended practice and repeated drilling.
Thinking is tied down to background knowledge, Willingham argues. Only when
children have sufficient background knowledge can they recognize relevant facts,
distinguish trends or patterns in information, and understand what is required to
solve a given problem.
In his book, Willingham cites research where students who have background
knowledge will remember and learn more than whose without. Knowledge begets
more knowledge. Students find it easier to remember a material if they already
know something about the subject than if they had not. In other words, having
some background knowledge reduces the learning curve and becomes a
foundation upon which more knowledge will accumulate.
Furthermore, research have also shown that practice makes memorization more
permanent. Students who had taken a single course on psychology, for instance,
were tested on their knowledge retention three to sixteen years later. Results
showed that regardless of what grades these students had obtained for the
psychology course, all these students showed a steady decline in their knowledge
retention over the years. This same trend was also observed for students who had
taken a single algebra course. However, students who had gone on to take more
math courses (such as calculus) saw much less decline in their knowledge
retention even after 55 years later! In other words, through practice, especially
over long term, knowledge retention became increasingly more permanent.
Knowledge retention falls steadily
over time despite what grades the
students had obtained for a course
they had taken once years ago.
Practice makes knowledge retention
increasingly more permanent.
Students who had taken an algebra
course for only once forgot
increasingly more of what they had
learned over time. But students who
had gone on to take other maths
courses (such as calculus) retained
more of what they had learned for
longer periods, even after 55 years.
Willingham’s book reminds us that there is no shortcut for effective learning. At
the end and regardless of whatever new or exciting teaching methods we used in
schools, there is still no escape from practice, drilling, and memorization in
learning. A good learner is still one who works hard and experiences boredom.
A child who cannot deal with boredom …
becomes flustered with higher education.
Many people are unaware that boredom can also act like a filter, enabling us to
focus and appreciate the beauty and profundity of an experience or phenomena.
When our children lives are fed with a steady diet of TV and computer games, this
cacophony of dynamic excitement distracts or obscures our children from
focusing and appreciating a particular learning experience. Boredom provides
that focus needed in children to receive and respond to learning experiences
which could otherwise be drowned out by excessive stimulations.
But isn’t boredom associated with negative and anti-social behaviour? Yes, bored
kids do get into trouble by being involved in drugs, crime, and other dangerous
behaviors. But the same energy that drives bored kids into trouble can also drive
these kids into positive, pro-social activities. Research have shown that, when
given meaningful opportunities, bored people will more likely donate money to
charities or be involved in charity work than the control groups. In other words,
boredom can be channelled into positive outlets.
My own experience have shown that I can be most creative – or at least most
productive – when I am bored. Out of boredom in 2011, for instance, I started to
write and publish in what soon became my most number of papers published in
journals in one year. Likewise, it was out of boredom that I decided one day to
write an academic book. This book took me nine months to complete, and I only
got started because I was bored in 2006.
Meera Syal, the multi-talented British comedian, writer, playwright, singer,
journalist, producer and actress, grew up in a small village. She often escaped
from boredom by reading books, going for trips to the library, talking to people
she would normally not engage with, or even learning to bake cakes from one
neighbour. It was boredom and the lack of constant distractions during her
childhood that Meera Syal now sees as crucial drivers to her creative
development.
Multi-talented Meera Syal credits
her boredom she experienced during
her childhood for the development of
her creativity (photo from
www.bbc.co.uk).
So, yes, boredom has a bad reputation – but this is only because we have
misjudged it. Channelled to good use, boredom can trigger creativity and break
us out of our procrastination. Boredom teaches us concentration, endurance, and
resilience, and it appears boredom is a necessary ingredient in our learning
exercise.
“… children need to have stand-and-stare time, time imagining and pursuing their own thinking processes or
assimilating their experiences through play or just observing the world around them.”
– Teresa Belton, early childhood specialist
“All your intelligence comes into play when you are so bored you can’t stand it any more.”
– Lenore Skenazy, book author of “Free-Range Kids”
My
Bella
TV
interview:
Encouraging children to read, the
importance of reading, and what
to do with the reluctant reader
I was very fortunate to be invited to appear on Bella, a TV programme by ntv7, on
my opinions about ways to encourage a reading habit in children, the importance
of reading, and about reluctant book readers.
So, on Oct 13, 2013, 2:30 pm, my family and I made our way to the ntv7 studio in
Glenmarie, Shah Alam. There we met the Bella TV crew and the lovely host,
Daphne Iking.
Prior to the show, I was given a set of questions that could be asked by Daphne
during the interview. The following are questions that were more-or-less asked
during the pre-recorded show.
In your opinion, do magazine and comics book
count as reading?
Yes, they do. If our children are reluctant readers, then it is better that they read
comic books than nothing. But bear in mind that there are many types of reading
materials. Comic books are only one such type. Each reading type has its own
function and effectiveness in building what I call our “mental muscles”.
I was asked about ways to encourage
reading in children, the importance
of reading, what I thought about
public libraries, and my experience
as an educator at my university.
Some people join a gym or fitness club – or buy an exercise bike or treadmill – to
build up their physical fitness level. They want to be healthier, to lose or even
gain weight, or to build up their muscles. Likewise, reading is an exercise for our
minds, to build up our mental muscles; that is, our mental facilities for better
thinking skills.
Zachary and I are waiting in
the visitors’ lounge while
the Bella TV crew prepare
for the show. Zachary was
amazingly calm!
Yes, reading gains us knowledge and builds up our language skills, but perhaps
most people are unaware that reading also gains us comprehension, awareness,
understanding, appreciation, and empathy over a wide range of issues, be they
issues on social, economics, politics, environment, and science.
Reading makes us more open-minded, not so open-minded that our brains fall out,
but open enough to understand that other perspectives to an issue exists, that
world issues are seldom black-or-white as some people tend to see.
So, different reading materials have different effectiveness to train our mental
muscles. Comic books are useful and fun, but, as parents, we need to encourage
our children to also read more advanced texts, those with more complex ideas
that will cause our children reflect more deeply on ideas.
We can introduce to our children more advanced reading materials that have the
similar genre or theme as the comics our children love to read.
A good example is a news article I read some time ago. There was an awardwinning book author who has an interesting past. As a child, he hated reading and
would never read the books his mother bought for him. However, he loved playing
football, so his mother, on a whim, bought him a book about football. That book
triggered his reading passion. Suddenly, here was a book that he enjoyed reading
because it was about football, in which he was passionate. He enjoyed reading so
much that he started to write, and who would have guessed that many years later,
he would go on to win a book award for young adult fiction.
Daphne Iking, the host of
Bella TV programme by
ntv7.
Daphne is asking the kids questions
about their favourite reading books
and why reading is important to
them. Each child is from a different
parent. Zachary is seated farthest
away from Daphne, at the far right.
As an educator, how do you see your students?
Do they read books that are other than those
required (textbook)?
Unfortunately, students seldom read beyond than the provided lecture notes.
Moreover, lecturers, such as myself, would be evaluated by the students on
whether the provided lecture notes are suitably comprehensive. So, lecturers
cannot just come to class and teach without lecture notes, as done by some
lecturers in the past. This “no notes provided” lectures certainly cannot happen
today.
Yes, I could force the students to read books by saying materials from one or
more books would be tested in their exams. However, this coercion would work
only until the exams. Once over, the students would stop reading books. In fact,
such coercion would probably enforce the idea in students that reading books is
only for exams – a detriment to lifelong learning skills which we wish to inculcate
in students.
From your observation, do students who read
have better command in English?
Well, reading books is not about English but about command of a language.
Reading would certainly improve our language command in terms of grammar,
vocabulary, and expression of ideas and thoughts. So, a person who reads a lot
would certainly speak and write better.
I hope I got all my points across. It is
not easy to highlight all the
important points during my interview
as time was rather limited.
But what drives English proficiency in students is typically the students’
background. Local studies have shown that students living in urban areas and
whose parents have higher socio-economic status would not only use English
more but read more English-language books.
Some people use reading as a way to improve
their English. When they tried to improve their
English, there are some cases where people start
to make fun of them (for showing off). What is
your comment on that?
This is very unfortunate because it is true. According to a 2001 survey, less than
2% Malaysians (less than 400,000 people) use English as their first language.
English is seen by many as a language used only by elite minorities or for
professional, official, or international purpose.
The Chinese see speaking English as abnormal, and someone who speaks English
is said to be a “banana”: yellow on the outside but white inside.
I once had a Malay student who decided to speak English to her Malay friends.
For her effort, she was seen as a pariah. Her friends felt uncomfortable to speak
English among one another. The same goes for the Chinese.
I think this is the largest hindrance to increasing English proficiency among
Malaysians. It isn’t about lack of English teachers or lack of schools hours on
learning English. Although Malaysians understand the importance of English,
they are not willing to master the language due to social – and political – barriers.
Unfortunately, what we see in Malaysia is not unique to just this country.
Philippines and Hong Kong also see declining competency in English despite their
government efforts to encourage English usage and even making English a
compulsory language course in schools.
In the last segment, all parents were
brought in together for our final
remarks. These parents are also
bloggers about parenting and child
care issues.
Do you see any significance difference between
students who like to read and those who don’t?
Definitely. You can tell the difference between a person who reads and one who
does not. And this difference is not subtle. A person who reads a lot will talk,
speak, think, and behave differently than one who does not read.
One essential skill reading imparts is the ability to self-learn. As a lecturer, I am
sometimes frustrated that I cannot count on books to help my students when they
come to me with their problems. I cannot, for example, tell my students to read
this or that chapter in a particular book. Students who do not have a strong
reading habit suffer from some kind of mental block when they read text
containing complex ideas. They may understand the individual words that make
up the text but yet fail to understand what the whole text is trying to tell them.
In other words, a strong reading skill enables students to understand complex
ideas. Research have shown that children who read a lot understand more
complex ideas than children who do not read even if these children are computer
or IT savvy.
The satisfying result of inculcating a
reading habit in children is when
they pick out their selected books
from the shelves and start to read on
their own — without coercion.
A fictional storybook can cost more than RM 30.
Do you think the price of books is a contributing
factor of poor reading habit among children?
This is a common excuse people use for not reading. High price of books is only a
small contributor to lack of reading among Malaysians. People are willing to
spend so much money on buying the latest IT gadgets such as smartphones and
tablets, but yet are unwilling to spend money on books.
Moreover, with their latest IT gadgets, they can buy eBooks which are much
cheaper than print books, but do they buy these eBooks? Unlikely.
Public libraries are also available, and book sales are becoming increasingly
common. So, the excuse that books are expensive does not hold water.
The real reason why Malaysians seldom read is reading is slow. Reading takes
effort especially when reading text with complex ideas that forces us to reflect on
its message. Reading is difficult because it is like exercising but for our minds. As
some people do not like to physically exercise, some people will not like to read.
It is interesting to note that a baby can learn to speak without being taught. The
baby can hear and learn to talk even without us teaching the baby. But reading
must be taught. A baby cannot just learn reading on his or her own. Reading takes
effort and it is hard work – but the returns are priceless and lasts a lifetime.
My books are this wide and this tall
… Zachary’s amazing collection of
books! We started to read to him
since he was only a month old.
When it comes to reading, would you advise
parents to encourage their kids to read light
materials (Enid Blyton, Sweet Valley, and Harry
Potter) or go for heavier and more informative
materials (Shakespeare / biography), and why?
It is important that we do not force our children to read books that they do not
enjoy reading. Reading should be a pleasurable activity and that our children do
not associate reading books to only school work or exams.
But at the same time, we must ensure our children read a wide range of interests
or issues. This will expand their outlook on life. We should try to encourage our
children to read books on science, geography, and history.
There are so many good books out there that “teach” various important topics
without making it too academic.
What is your opinion about the facility of public
libraries in Malaysia? What are the things that
need to be improved?
School and universities would be all right because these are places of learning.
They would continue to see users who patronize these libraries for school or
university work. However, public libraries would become obsolete if they continue
as they are. Increasingly more books are in the digital format.
Even today, we see bookshops closing down or downsizing. So, in the future, I see
a change in our libraries from those that carry printed books to those that carry
books in digital format instead. No doubt we will witness an interesting future, to
see how libraries evolve or adapt to changes.
Mom reading to Zachary in a
bookshop. Ensure your child can see
the pictures and words while you
read to your child. As you read, point
to the words you are currently
reading so your child can track your
reading.
This interview would be aired on Oct 29, 2013 (Tuesday) at 11:00 am on ntv7. You can also watch it for free
on tonton.com.my.